States Detail Strategies to Invest in the Early Childhood Workforce in Their ESSA Plans

It will be important to maintain a watchful eye on implementation

June 20, 2017

New Americais proud to partner with the Center on Enhancing Early Learning Outcomes (CEELO) on this blog series highlighting early learning opportunities and challenges under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). In this week's post, Winona Hao highlights state plans to invest in the early learning workforce.

High-quality
early learning requires a high-quality workforce with specialized knowledge
and skills. To better support this under-resourced and complex workforce,
state education agencies (SEAs) and state boards of
education can use their policy levers to investigate and influence workforce
quality in four areas: qualifications and licensure, preparation programs,
professional development, and compensation. And they can leverage provisions of
the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) to advance changes in their states.

There
are many obstacles to building a high-quality workforce: inadequate career
advancement opportunities, lack of effective professional development,
inconsistent policies and standards across different settings from birth to age
eight due to varied funding streams, low wages and benefits, and low public
perceptions of teachers’ skill sets.

In
most states, it doesn’t take much to become an early childhood teacher. Among
the 43 states and DC with state-funded pre-K, only 23 require lead
teachers to have a bachelor’s degree. Outside the state pre-K programs, only
a few states require child development associate credentials or vocational
training. Most states require only a high school diploma or nothing at all.
Before they change policies affecting the early education workforce, however,
state policymakers must understand what core competencies are needed and what
resources they can provide to help educators attain those competencies and
become highly qualified.

ESSA
opens up great opportunities to support this workforce. For the first time,
early childhood educators are included in the definition of professional
development under Title II. The U.S. Department of Education released nonregulatory early
learning guidance on ESSA last year urging SEAs and districts to take
advantage of the law’s opportunities to support these educators—particularly
through use of funds under Title I, II, and III to support professional
development.

Louisiana developed and adopted
new teacher preparation
competencies in October 2016, including early childhood education
competencies. To help teacher preparation providers and their preK-12 partners
transition to the new requirements, Louisiana will use Title II funds to
organize biannual community meetings on establishing strong district
preparation partnerships and on developing competency-based teacher preparation
programs that include a year-long teaching residency. This summer, Louisiana’s
Board of Elementary and Secondary Education will also consider a five-year plan
for transitioning to a teacher preparation accountability system that rewards
preparation programs placing year-long teaching residents in rural and
high-need schools.

Michigan is developing a
statewide system to align professional development for educators serving
children from birth to age eight. They want to use Title II to develop
on-demand professional learning modules for all early childhood educators.
Michigan also encourages its districts to apply Title II, Part A subgrants
toward collaborations with professional learning providers that support
educators in the birth to third grade space. Michigan’s plan is noteworthy in
its calls for greater pay equity for the early childhood workforce. It
encourages districts to blend or braid state and federal resources (e.g., Child
Care Development Fund, ESSA Title II, state funding, etc.) to solve the deeply
rooted pay parity issue. Michigan is one of the NASBE Network States that will develop a
framework to strengthen the state’s early childhood education workforce.

The chairman of the Illinois State Board of Education, James Meeks, recently
said during an NASBE webinar that the board was keen
to ensure through their ESSA plan that children in Illinois are ready to enter
kindergarten. Illinois is committed to using
Title I and II dollars to develop resources that support early learning
environments and aid in transitions throughout the preK-16 continuum. Their
plan highlighted school leaders’ and administrators’ needs for knowledge of
child development, pedagogical content and practice, and differentiation of
instruction. The Illinois state board will offer resources emphasizing school
leaders’ roles as instructional leaders, particularly for teachers in the early
grades.

Oregon aligned its ESSA plan
with the 2016 Educator
Advancement Report, which promotes a seamless system across the pre-K and
early elementary grades. A high level of commitment to supporting Oregon’s
preK-12 educators infuses the state’s plan. Oregon seeks to link early learning
providers with the K-3 public school systems, and it wants to invest in
developmentally appropriate, culturally responsive, and aligned professional
learning across preK-12. The state will invest in induction and mentoring
programs, and it will increase scholarships to recruit linguistically and
culturally diverse educators. Oregon also will offer in-service training to
strengthen early childhood standards alignment and early literacy.

With their public commitments to the early
learning workforce, these states underscore the central importance of early
childhood education. We hope more states will make similar commitments to early
learning in their ESSA plans to support educators in round two, set for
submission in September. For now, these early plans are undergoing peer review with the
U.S. Department of Education.

Even more important than the public commitments in ESSA plans, for analysts and
advocates, will be maintaining a watchful eye on implementation in the 2017–18
school year. This summer, 17 states will hold ESSA trainings for district superintendents and
teachers, a critical step for getting the right message out and making ESSA
successful.